The glass is half
by cognomen
Summary: A short, post episode III, pre episode IV fic, centering around QuiGon's former students. Yes I know that Yoda has a line in the end of episode three that discredits the first part, I wrote this some time ago and liked it anyway.


It was like waves crashing up over him, riptide beneath. Eddies and whorls of tides, pulling him this way and that way and away. It was the same force he'd known alive, only now his body no longer anchored him when it pulled and directed, so he did not have the luxury of following if he chose. Instead, he followed because it took him.

In part, it was all-encompassing, linking everything together in a way that was oceanic and blanketing, and yet selective and pulling. In part, it radiated individual from each living thing, innumerable pinpricks of being, like stars unseen in their distance or blinding in their proximity.

All of it was very attractive, but Qui-Gon shoved it aside with a single-minded (im)practicality that he had perfected in life. There was still far too much undone, and he would not leave the wheels that he had set in motion to spin unmanned and beyond control. Death was a little thing, compared to the force. Determination kept him together, focus kept him moving forward at a pace that held relevance to the living world. The force was timeless, patient. Sluggish. When there is no inescapable threat of death, the mind loses it's sense of urgency, forgotten rapidly like how time passes.

Time fights against Qui-Gon Jinn, when he wants to move forward, he finds things going slowly. When he gets there, he wishes he could turn things back. He finds that he is just a minute too late, and always uncertain if his messages make it. He works on a technique, testing, letting himself be pulled by the force, and then directing. He tests his abilities again and again - patiently urgent. When at last he can really appear, it is too late. He has seen what has happened, knows what he needs to do, the force directs him still.

Obi-Wan is a hermit. Anakin's monster has been realized. Yoda has gone into exile. There are no more Jedi Knights. The old order is gone, but the force whispers that there will be a new order. It must not be unguided, he senses. Currently, it's guides need to be shown what he has learned. A hard point to communicate when he is never entirely sure if he is heard. Obi-Wan often pauses, and then shakes his head. He tells himself he is tired, in a voice that sounds it, and goes back to trying to lose himself in daily activities.

Obi-Wan, who had once been so eager to believe, now had to be shown to see. He did not forget the force, but pushed it aside, ignored it. Qui-Gon did not blame him, regretted that his efforts turned his former student into mad old Ben who muttered to himself. Obi-Wan told himself to forget it, move on. As much as he told himself to let go, he held onto Anakin's lightsaber.

Then one day, Qui-Gon learned to project. It took a certain form of desperation, one that it was hard to conjure up as part of the force. He was sick of Obi-Wan berating himself, tired of trying to voice him messages that his former student would no longer even acknowledge. He had to be -seen-. He discovered, at last, when Obi-Wan was returning home from muttering his way around Mos Eisley, that it was all that needed to be done.

"Heavens!" And then, "Ouch!" As he dropped his cargo on his toes. Then, he just stared. Qui-Gon could almost feel him wondering if he'd had enough water to drink today, trying to dismiss it as a hallucination.

"I'm sorry." Was all Qui-Gon could think to say, now that he was certain he would be heeded. "For your toes." 

Obi-Wan's smile curled up at the edges of his mouth, turned the corners of his eyes crinkly with emotion. "You made me think I was mad!" He accused, tone merry with relief that he had been wrong.

"You convinced yourself." Qui-Gon smiled back, blue and faintly glowing but real and visible enough to fill Obi-Wan's glass again. "And when I tried to tell you otherwise, you used it to further your argument against yourself."

"I know, I know." Obi-Wan crouched, recovering dropped parts and food scattered on his floor. "After all those lectures about keeping an open mind." He paused, looked up. "I couldn't see you before, Master."

Implied, without being spoken in as many words, that he might finally have gone as crazy as others accused. Qui-Gon did not succumb to his momentary temptation to disappear simply to give his student fits. Instead, he remained as steady and present as he could.

"I couldn't be seen." He answered simply, his hands forming a circle against his stomach and hidden deep in his sleeves. It was easy to fall into a pattern of rest when he was dealing with someone alive. "I learned."

"What about the force?" Obi-Wan finished collecting the parts, put them on his table, and then settled on the edge of his bed. He looked lost, but anchored at last. "I mean, being one with..."

"I had too much to do." Qui-Gon smiled, speaking the easy truth. "And it took me far too long to learn this."

"What is there to do now?" Obi-Wan's attention came up guiltily, as if he might have to confess what he considered crimes. His gaze met his former-master's and he felt relieved.

Qui-Gon knew and forgave. Did not even judge, perhaps. "I'm going to teach you how."

---

Anakin was less skeptical. He was petulant, almost childish in his reception of the Jedi Knight. He did not doubt for a second, indeed seemed to sense Qui-Gon before he appeared or spoke.

"Go away." He sighed, mechanically deep beyond Anakin's years. He isolated himself, kept deathly silent. He reacted violently to company, rejected it out of a persistent fear of betrayal.

Qui-Gon believed that he also had a desperate fear not to be thought mad. He would rage and seethe at Qui-Gon's appearance, try to cut him down ineffectually, but the fits were sudden and silent. Private. And they passed quickly, a teenager's change of moods, flash fast and without an outlet.

"You can't just let it build up, Anakin." Qui-Gon knew it was fuel. Anakin saved up his hatred, let it burn low inside like a pilot light. When he had to call for his power, it would flare up, crushing and uncontrollable. Subtlety was not a practice of the dark side. Fuel contained, even Anakin must know from his love of machines, could explode for seemingly no reason. Gasses compressing down on one another until a tiny spark set the whole thing suddenly ablaze.

"I am not Anakin anymore." He rasped, refusing to look at Qui-Gon. He'd flung furniture through his one-time mentor. Drawn the new lightsaber he'd constructed and swung it for the space in Qui-Gon's chest where it's equally red predecessor had penetrated. This blade met only air, whisked through the willed projection of force that Qui-Gon made.

The Jedi Knight responded to the tantrum with patience and faint amusement. A terrifying jet plastic skin, and hundreds of mechanical parts that replaced what he had lost had not removed what Anakin was. Time would. Time, and the tutorages of Palpatine would eventually leave nothing of Anakin but a force-steeped monster. Feeling, but not thinking, and feeling only the negative emotions he held onto from the betrayal he'd made in his mind.

"You are still Anakin, so far." Qui-Gon said, matter-of-factly. "Though I cannot say for how long, and I must teach you while you will still remember why it is you want to learn."

"I have a new master now." The Vader growled, lowly. "And he will banish you. You're a ghost. Dead. Go away."

"Tell him." Qui-Gon said, his voice turning colder. Commanding and harsh. "He knows that the dark side is strong in life, but powerless in death. He cannot touch me, any more than you can. His powers do not match yours, Anakin. You know as much."

"Go away." Anakin repeated, sounding mechanical now. A trained robot, repeating it's programmed response. "Go away." A child sticking his fingers in his ears to avoid hearing something that he does not want to.

Qui-Gon persisted, and though Anakin eventually stopped acknowledging him, turning a cold, plastic shoulder whenever Qui-Gon appeared, he heard. He learned the lesson, took it to heart and buried it deep with the rest of himself, plunging it into the black with the rest of everything he once valued in himself. He put everything aside, hoping that someday the ghosts tied to these things he no longer wanted to remember would stop haunting him.

Eventually, they did. 


End file.
